Griffin speaks with director John Landis, record executives, Jackson’s co-star Ola Ray, choreographers, and others to illuminate the process of how the star created something totally revolutionary. On the backs of the record-setting LP of the same name, “Thriller” set a new standard for the infant medium of music videos with its unprecedented length, its unheard-of budget, and its unparalleled wit and dancing. This achievement came at a time when Jackson had much to be proud of. As Griffin writes:“Thriller” marked the most incandescent moment in Jackson’s life, his apex creatively as well as commercially. He would spend the rest of his career trying to surpass it. “In the Off the Wall/Thriller *era, Michael was in a constant state of becoming,” says Glen Brunman, then marketing director at Jackson’s record company Epic. “It was all about the music, until it also became about the sales and the awards, and something changed forever.”

It was the “Thriller” video that pushed Jackson over the top, consolidating his position as the King of Pop, a royal title he encouraged.… The video’s frenzied reception, whipped up by round-the-clock showings on MTV, would more than double album sales, driving* Thriller into the record books as the No. 1 LP of all time, a distinction it maintains today. But, for anyone paying close attention during the making of the “Thriller” video—and Jackson’s collaborators were—the outlines of subsequent tragedies were already painfully visible.

Still living at home at the age of 25, Jackson’s problems with his family were painfully apparent during the shoot. Landis and other crew members witnessed the frequent clashes between father and son, which would become public knowledge in the coming years, when Jackson would publicly refer to Joe Jackson’s abuse.

*More than once Landis found himself caught up in the twisted dynamics of the Jackson family. One night when Joseph and Katherine Jackson visited the set, the director recalls, “Michael asked me to have Joe removed. He said, ‘Would you please ask my father to leave?’ So I go over to Mr. Jackson. ‘Mr. Jackson, I’m sorry, but can you please
?’ ‘Who are you?’ ‘I’m John Landis. I’m directing this.’ ‘Well, I’m Joe Jackson. I do what I please, and I want to be here.’ I said, ‘I’ll have to ask security to remove you if you don’t leave now.’” Landis had a policeman escort Joe Jackson off the set.

Distancing himself from his father was a theme in Michael Jackson’s life. He had to approve the reams of promotional materials that Epic generated to support “Thriller,” and one day he called the record label’s art department and asked an art director if she could retouch his nose on a famous photo of him as a child. “I want you to slim the wings of my nose,” Jackson told her. “O.K., but why, Michael?” she asked, and tried to reassure him that his face looked fine just the way it was. “I don’t want to look like my father,” Jackson replied. “Every time I look at that photograph I think I look like my father.”*

Despite his unfathomable wealth and legions of rabid fans, both male and female, Jackson lived a very quiet and solitary life — neither a typical rockstar’s life nor that of an ordinary 25-year-old man.

Jackson also reveled in the company of children at Hayvenhurst, which was like a warm-up for Neverland, a kids’ paradise, which he loved sharing. He had struck up a friendship with the four-foot-three-inch television star Emmanuel Lewis, 12, with whom he would invent games and roll around on the grass, laughing. When George Folsey’s son, Ryan, 13, accompanied his father to meetings at the Jackson home, Michael behaved like a kid who was bored hanging out with the adults, jumping up to show Ryan around. They would feed the llamas, play the video game Frogger, and drive toy Model T’s around the grounds. “Michael was 25, but I’d say that he was 13,” says Ryan. “Mentally, he was 12 to 15 years behind. He could relate to me because he was my age.”

Jackson’s collaborators also gained some insight into his complicated sexuality. At one point, the singer told Landis he was still a virgin. Others noticed a child-like naïveté about sex:

Vince Paterson, who helped with the choreography in “Thriller,” says that Jackson would ask him startlingly ignorant questions about sex—“simple, biological, stupid 12-year-old questions.” He adds, “I never saw Michael as a sexual creature. He was always sort of asexual to me—some people are like that. I never had one vibe, as dynamic and electric and powerful as he was. He was like nobody I had ever met in my life. On the one hand he was so socially retarded, and on the other hand he was a creative genius.”

Perhaps no one understood this better than Ola Ray, who depicts her flirtation with Jackson as being characterized by his fragility.

“I won’t say that I’ve seen him in his birthday suit but close enough,” she says, laughing. Because he was shy, she tried not to scare him by coming on too strong. “What we had was such like a little kindergarten thing going on. I thought it was important for him to be around someone who would make him feel comfortable and that was my main objective.”

Griffin paints a portrait of Jackson that could come only from those who knew him—honest and revelatory with sympathy. To read the whole story, pick up a copy of the July 2010 issue of Vanity Fair.